Social networking through the Internet allows individuals to communicate with other individuals in a timely and convenient manner. Some popular public social networking sites include Facebook®, Linkedin®, Myspace, and Twitter®. Once an individual becomes a member of one of these and other social networking sites, it is typical to build a network of other members for business connections, to renew old friendships, to establish new friendships, to discuss matters or hobbies, and to connect with family members.
Social networking sites typically require an individual to have a device that connects to the Internet, with the device being a computer using a browser or a provider-specific computer or mobile device application. To become a member of a social networking site, an individual navigates to the website and establishes an account by selecting a unique user identifier or name, and a password. Once an account has been setup, the individual may access the account by logging in using the user identifier and the password. An individual may be a member on multiple social networking sites. This requires that the individual establish an account on each social networking site. It is possible that the unique identifier on one site may not be available for selection on another site. If this occurs then the individual must remember multiple different identifiers and associated passwords for each social network site for which the individual becomes a member. This also complicates establishing connections in that the individual has to provide the different identifiers for each social network site to other individuals that want to connect to the individual on the various social network sites.
Some problems associated with being a member of a social network are how to select contacts or members that you want to be associated with, and how to provide your contact information to other potential contacts. Although social network sites have the ability for you to invite other contacts, it may be cumbersome or difficult to determine which individuals you want to connect with on each individual social network site that you have established a membership. It is also possible, for various reasons, that you may find it desirable that an individual not know, or not find out, that you are a member of a particular social networking site. However, keeping track of this may be difficult if you become a member of numerous social networking sites. Another disadvantage to being on multiple social networking sites is that if a contact needs to be deleted from every social networking site, then each social networking site must be accessed to remove that particular contact.
The existing systems fails to dynamically aggregate and configure access to social networking contacts to provide for selectivity as to who you may connect with on various social networking sites. Further, the existing systems lack a mechanism to allow a user control as to which social networking sites another individual has knowledge of you being a member. The existing systems also fail to allow a user to easily remove an individual as a contact on multiple social networking sites.